Page 45 of Vampire Pack

The vampires had been on our team a lot longer than I had. Immortality helped with that.

I got out of the car, and King grabbed all of our bags. When I walked around to help, he swatted my ass lightly, buying himself time to finish loading his arms full of everything.

"I can help," I pointed out.

"You're still injured."

"Don't pretend you would've let me help if I wasn't."

The small grin he flashed me was so genuine, my stupid fucking heart actually beat a little harder.

He gestured me toward the door that led inside, so I went in. He was close behind me.

The inside of the house was spacious, and masculine without being rustic or manly. Everything was clean, and well kept. There wasn't too much furniture, and there wasn't a lot of décor, but it was nice.

Really nice.

He directed me to the kitchen in the shared living space, and put our groceries away in the refrigerator.

King refused to let me help, so I checked the freezer. I bit my lip when I saw a bag of Mallory's blood stored on the large, top shelf, labelled with a date and her name in her handwriting.

She always wrote snarky notes to Jude when she gave him her blood, since she was trying to wean him off his obsession with it. This one said, "RATION THIS, ASSHOLE".

Every other shelf was full of frozen food.

"We're trying to help him curb the obsession," King said, having noticed me checking out the blood. "It stays out here so we can make sure he doesn't guzzle it in one day."

I shut the freezer door and took a few steps back. My ass rested against a few of the cabinets, and I watched King's body move while he finished putting everything away.

"What do you know about the thing between them?" I asked.

He made a noncommittal noise. "Jude's addicted to her blood and trying reluctantly to get off of it. She wants the addiction to end already."

"Is he dragging his feet?"

"Of course he is. He's Jude. He claims that her blood is a delicacy, though."

"A delicacy?" I wracked my brain for the word. I'd taken classes about being mated to a vampire, obviously. Every week, I was required to show up for another damn lecture.

I was supposed to know everything about vamps.

"I'm sure you've heard about blood preferences in the classes. Some vampires prefer richer, heavier blood. Some prefer lighter, sweeter blood. Most blood falls in one of those two categories," he explained.

"Okay." I was officially curious. "I've heard about blood preferences, but I've never heard names or details."

King shut the door and turned around, leaning up against the fridge like I was against the cabinets. "Sweet blood is almost always lighter and thinner. Rich blood is almost always heavy, and thicker. We call it a delicacy when someone has sweet, thick blood. Gourmet is the label we use for light, rich blood."

"Huh." I definitely hadn't known that.

"None of those attributes are innately better or worse. It just comes down to preference. Delicacies and gourmets are hard to find. You can't request them from blood banks."

"So Jude prefers delicacies, and Mallory is one."

"Right." King nodded. "And he's only ever had a few blood bags before he bit her."

"That's why he doesn't really want to get off it?"

"Yeah."